Chapter 15: A murderer who lacks emotion

It took some time for Beatrice’s crying to finally subside.

“Are you feeling a bit calmer now?”

“Yeah, somehow.”

She kept wiping away the incessant tears, her face swelling up.

But since she was originally quite a beauty, she ended up looking like a sort of cute little ugly duckling.

“First of all, it seems certain that your name is Beatrice.”

Beatrice frowned and asked back.

“Do you have any proof that the baby in that painting is me?”

“If you have no connection at all, but burst into tears upon seeing that painting, wouldn’t that count as proof?”

“That’s just a baseless assumption. If tears could be considered evidence, then the whole world would be innocent just by crying.”

“Hmm.”

That was indeed a reasonable objection.

Still, there was one more undeniable piece of evidence.

“Compare yourself to the woman in the portrait.”

“…Why?”

“If you don’t understand, I’ll show you a mirror.”

I immediately reflected Beatrice’s face in a nearby broken mirror.

Her face resembled the woman in the portrait in too many ways.

“Isn’t this very clear proof?”

“…”

Realizing just how much she resembled the portrait, Beatrice was left speechless and fell silent.

…Though there was a strange feeling about it all, I ignored it for now.

“Beatrice. You were a member of this Assassin Group. And you must be the bloodline of the person in that portrait.”

“…”

“For some reason, you lost your memory and became the child of Baronette Saint-Germain. And Baronette Saint-Germain is connected to the Demon King’s Army Corps Commander, which means you’re under threat from the Demon Race. Yet, despite all that, you blindly crave trust and love from him.”

“…”

“Even knowing about his ties to the Demon King’s Army, you still try to protect him. Isn’t that right?”

Beatrice’s expression darkened.

I didn’t stop and pressed on.

“Let me ask you. Are you sane?”

“…I am—”

“You’re not.”

Muffin, who had been silently listening, spoke bluntly.

Beatrice glared sharply at him.

He shrugged in response.

“How could I defend the bastard who once called himself family, yet conspired with the Demon King’s Army to kill his own family for greed?”

Beatrice gritted her teeth and asked.

“Then you think you can cut off even a lifetime of family ties?”

“Yes.”

Muffin nodded confidently.

“He died recently. Unfortunately, I didn’t kill him personally, but I even borrowed the King of Prassion’s power to do it, so it wasn’t something done half-heartedly.”

“…”

“But you’ve lost your memories, haven’t you? Then it’s as if all your memories of Baronette Saint-Germain are gone too. So why do you blindly try to protect him?”

Having already given the answer before, I carefully watched Beatrice’s expression.

Only then did she seem to realize just how absurd her situation was, displaying a flurry of emotions.

A pale face, anger, confusion, shock—all swirling like thunderclouds in an instant.

When everything you believed in shatters brutally, it’s more than just hard to endure; a helplessness takes over the entire body.

…Yes. That’s ‘normal.’

“Beatrice. Don’t fall into helplessness. As I keep saying, I need you.”

“Ugh… You don’t just say that to a lady.”

That was an amusing thing to say.

A lady trained in assassination, unhesitant about killing people.

But this wasn’t the right moment to be sarcastic, so I swallowed the words.

“Still, I have to say it to you. To make you snap out of it.”

“…”

After humoring me a bit, Beatrice turned to Muffin.

“Muffin, did you find out anything else here?”

“…Yes.”

Muffin, who had quietly been watching us, sighed and replied.

“There’s a mechanism here.”

He approached the portrait and gently lifted it, turning a hidden lever.

The ground beneath the painting slid open sideways, revealing a staircase down.

Lighting the way with my sword, I descended and soon saw a small chamber.

“What is this place?”

“A secret spot for exchanging messages or talking to someone in private, it seems.”

Muffin, who had apparently searched here several times before, took out a book with no hesitation.

It was obviously not an ordinary book.

“Magically sealed?”

“Yes. It ignites naturally once you leave the room. We had no choice but to leave it behind.”

“Oh.”

A book found only here.

Curious, I grabbed it and opened it.

Most likely, inside was the crucial evidence explaining why Beatrice joined the Demon King’s Army in despair.

“Hmm?”

But when I opened it, the content was quite different from what I expected.

“Artificial Life Project?”

Skimming through, I found that Baronette Saint-Germain had been preparing something for a long time—a pinnacle of magical engineering.

‘Come to think of it, the core defense technology of the Prasion Kingdom was the Golem, wasn’t it?’

Magical Golems are one of the pinnacles of magical engineering—tools that follow simple commands precisely.

According to the book, this Artificial Life Project started from those magical Golems.

Cutting out all the trivial details, the conclusion was…

“To artificially create life using magical Golems?”

A plan to birth life artificially from magical Golems.

The rest was filled with technical jargon I couldn’t understand, but as I flipped a few more pages, I found what looked like a diary entry.

[The experiments so far have been successful.]

I stopped flipping and read carefully.

[But at the same time, it was like a failure. I realized from the very start that the experiment was doomed to fail. Life born from Golems without exception suffers from emotional defects.]

I put the book down and shared the content with Muffin and Beatrice.

[The plan to create fully human beings without limits failed. No matter how much we use the essence of magical engineering, it seems impossible for anything other than a true human to carry emotions. But that’s strange. Even humans become lifeless like Golems after death, so how do emotions continue? How should this be adjusted?]

It was a record of madness and obsession.

A tenacity that refused to give up despite repeated failures.

[There is a mountain of work to do. But I cannot continue this experiment anymore. The Assassin Group is to be ‘disposed of.’ There is one surviving hunting dog, but due to emotional defects, we cannot know when it will bite its own master.]

And there was a warning.

[Brothers, if you see this, do not approach the last assassin. I left a mark only you can see. If someone born solely to live for a single blind purpose receives attention, she will chase her brothers until death. It will cause all kinds of trouble, so do not approach until I handle it. — Jair Saint-Germain —]

The moment I saw the name written below, Beatrice’s eyes turned lifeless.

“…Huh.”

It was the eyes of the Commander of the Army of Scorn.

“This… This is the truth?”

Beatrice clenched her teeth.

Anger shook her pupils, her whole body trembling.

I looked at Muffin and asked.

“What do you think?”

“…Do you really need to ask me that in this situation?”

“You probably already feel it yourself.”

“Ha.”

Understanding what I meant, Muffin sighed and spoke.

“Beatrice, stop pretending.”

“…”

At that moment, the atmosphere surrounding Beatrice suddenly dissipated.

“Pretending?”

“Yes. That was a very good performance.”

I sat down facing the collapsed Beatrice.

“Pretending to be normal isn’t easy. Especially when you’re fully aware your situation isn’t normal, forcing yourself to act normal can’t help but feel off.”

“…”

Some of Beatrice’s emotions were restrained.

She was born that way.

That was a fact proven when she and I danced our blade dance amidst heaps of Demon Race corpses.

Yet now she cries her heart out while feeling familial love?

‘Enough with the nonsense.’

She had so focused on pretending normal that she forgot what truly mattered.

“Beatrice. You sought parental love from Jair Saint-Germain, and that emotion was implanted in you. Now you know that.”

How it was implanted didn’t matter.

What mattered was that it was clear she had been implanted with it.

But putting that aside, what exactly is Beatrice feeling now?

“Do you feel anger? No. Do you feel intense regret? No. You don’t care about anything right now.”

“…Because my emotions are broken?”

“No, because you never learned them.”

“…What?”

I scoffed.

“Why the surprise? Did you think that just because I read someone else’s diary, I would consider you an emotionless monster?”

“Isn’t that obvious? You’re different from me…”

“Ordinary? Wow. That’s the most boring joke I’ve ever heard in my life. You’re not seriously thinking that, are you?”

“…”

Of course, I consider myself ordinary.

But what others call ordinary is far from what I think.

“Don’t assume your idea of ordinary matches mine. I’ve already been through too much to have that kind of ordinary.”

“…”

“But even so, I always live by my own will.”

That’s why I’m proud of myself.

Even if my life is covered in regret and despair, I never planned to give up until I finish this with the Demon King.

“…Sounds like an old man’s nonsense.”

Beatrice looked dumbfounded, but I didn’t care and said what I had to say.

“Beatrice. I told you I’d tell you the truth and showed you the evidence. Now it’s your turn to choose. What do you want to do?”

Beatrice looked at me with lifeless eyes and slowly spoke.

“Yeah. You’re right. Actually, I’m not really interested in most things. Only the obsession to be loved by him kept me alive.”

I nodded silently, listening carefully to her words.

“It’s the same now. Even knowing why I was born and who my parents are… I feel nothing.”

Because my parents were merely Golems, do I not have to feel sadness?

Or, because I was born without parents, should I be drowned in sorrow for myself?

Beatrice couldn’t even make this simple choice.

Because she felt nothing.

Put differently…

‘Because she doesn’t even care.’

At the same time, not caring means no emotions are felt regardless of the situation.

An insect dies right in front of her?

She doesn’t care.

An animal dies?

She doesn’t care.

A person dies?

She doesn’t care.

Her parents die?

She still doesn’t care.

Therefore, Beatrice cannot shed the tears of sorrow that any normal person would.

Because she cares about nothing.

A killer devoid of emotion, whose sole purpose is to be loved by Baronette Saint-Germain.

But now that she knows even that purpose was implanted, it’s safe to say her purpose no longer exists.

So how does Beatrice feel after realizing this?

“Ha… It’s so hollow.”

Not even the slightest anger remained.

Everything had been implanted, and the regret of wasting her life on something useless had vanished. She seemed to have no reason left to expend any emotion.

From a third-person perspective, she might look like a sage with a strong mentality, but to me, she appeared dangerously unstable.

Her empty eyes pierced through me.

“Sorry, but could you just kill me?”

I smirked and replied.

“No.”